Havelock (Full Edition)

Curiosity Quills Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

Eliana Havelock started out looking for her long lost father and ended up embroiled in a mess of epic proportions near Karachi, Pakistan. Rescued by MI6 operatives from a group that call themselves Spiral, Eliana decides to take matters into her own hands and leave the hospital before being questioned. Meanwhile, a rash of killings around the world are troubling and Agent Blackwell of MI6 who, incidentally, brought in Eliana, is on the case and needs her help to solve it. Working with British Secret Intelligence Service was not exactly what she wanted, but there is definitely not one dull moment.

With nonstop action and a fast paced plot, Havelock has a great deal of character development that you might not expect. Eliana Havelock is a great main character - that combination of skill, strength, and intelligence, coupled with a no nonsense attitude, makes this book interesting to read. With a good plot twist near the conclusion, Havelock hit many of the marks of a great thriller for me. I would have liked a little more background on Eliana, but I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend Havelock to fans of mystery/thrillers.

**** 4 out of 5 stars Review by: Mark Palm I’d Rather Be Bond...

When asked if she would like to play a Bond girl in a installment of the famous film franchise Angelina Jolie was quoted as saying “Actually, I’d refer to play him; I’d rather be Bond.” The same thing could be said, in the best way possible, about the eponymous hero of Jane. D. Everly’s novel Havelock.

It’s taken me months to finish this novel, because it was published in serial form. When I received the final installment and read it, then re-read the entire book, and it works well either way. Whether Ms. Everly wrote it in installments or not has no effect on the finished product. And it’s a fun, fast paced product, in case you are wondering.

Since I gave you the basic synopsis in the first review I will keep it brief; Havelock is the story of Eliana Havelock, an enigmatic adventuress who infiltrates MI-6 to stop Mason Treadik, a super-rich evil genius who wants to corner the contract-killer market for the entire world by creating the ultimate assassins. The story unfolds in alternating first and third person chapters, and while the third-person sections are important the first-person chapters, from the point-of-view of our heroine, are the ones that really make this book a blast. Ms. Everly really seems to be at her best when she is looking through the eyes of her protagonist, and while the author makes several nods to the works of Ian Fleming, her creation, Eliana Havelocke, is definitely her own woman. She has all the prowess of Bond, but with more humor and an ironic sense of self-awareness that helps ground the more sensational aspects of the plot. Some of the science and technology might be questionable, but the action is well-described and realistic, and the last time I checked I don’t read thrillers for procedural accuracy and text-book dryness.

The characters are solid if unspectacular, except for Eliana, and she’s the one the matters. That her mission has a personal reason, which is hinted but not spelled-out, gives her story a bit more urgency than many spy thrillers, and Ms. Everly gives us just enough to sate us, but leaves enough mystery to make us want to come back. I got a particular kick out of Ms. Everly’s take on Treadik’s end-game, which was a real nod to the classic British spy genre, and her handling of her heroine’s sexuality, which was a reversal of the same. Ms. Everly even gives us an evil organization with a catchy names, and if this wasn’t an ARC I would quote her homage to a classic line from the Bond canon. All in all Havelock is a fast-moving clever thriller that left me me waiting for the next installment.

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This book was totally brilliant, unexpected and different to anything I have ever read before. This is an author I will be looking out for again. I am curious if this is perhaps the first in a series because it set the scene beautifully and left plenty of scope with several unanswered questions.